In-plant Profiles

Russell Gayer has found success right in his own home town. Russell Gayer is devoted to his home town. That's not surprising considering he's the fourth-generation owner of the family house in Springdale, Ark. His great-grandfather bought the property as a homestead back when "frontier" meant a mortgage rate even lower than the current dip. "I met my wife here," says Gayer, print services manager for Tyson Foods Inc. "We both had roots here, and we're very fortunate for all the opportunity that's here. I could probably go somewhere else, but there's no reason to." As a place to carve out a niche

By anticipating the needs of its company, Best Buy's Print Solutions Group has become one of the top in-plants in the retail business. By Mike Llewellyn BEST BUY Corp., based in Eden Prairie, Minn., opens between 50 and 70 new stores every year, according to Rick Neumann, director of printing for the company's Print Solutions Group (PSG). With each grand opening representing $35,000 in new print and fulfillment business each year, on top of the corporate and insourcing work PSG already provides, it's little wonder the 110-employee in-plant ranked 15th on IPG's Top 50 list. In fact, PSG's process group is charged with staying

With a sense of humor and impeccable customer service, Kevin Field has made several in-plant success stories. by Mike Llewellyn IT WAS supposed to be a small affair, a quiet gathering of friends and colleagues at Washington, D.C.'s 500-employee Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). They were seeing Manager Kevin Field off to his current post as administrator for Virginia Beach City/Schools Printing and Mail Services. Instead, 250 people showed up to say good-bye. "If they want to come, they're going to come," Field recalls joking to his former boss. No one expected that kind of turnout, but it shouldn't have come as much

With U.S. forces still deployed in Iraq, the CIA's intelligence data is more crucial to national security than ever. The agency relies on its in-plant to publish this top-secret information. by Bob Neubauer Long before the first U.S. troops began their march toward Baghdad, President Bush turned to the CIA for the latest intelligence information on Iraq. The Central Intelligence Agency, in turn, relied on its office of Imaging & Publishing Support (IPS) to print this classified information quickly and accurately. In the same vein, when the country was preparing to enter Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, IPS

A strong focus on customers, along with expertise in process color printing and online ordering, have built University of Missouri-Columbia Printing Services into an in-plant powerhouse. by Bob Neubauer Not many in-plants can lay claim to a six-color press—let alone two of them. But when you're the largest printing operation in a city of 84,500, the big jobs have a way of finding you. With 105 full- and part-time employees, University of Missouri-Columbia Printing Services is not only a local printing giant, but one of the top in-plants in the country. It ranked 27th on the recent IPG Top 50, and boasted sales of

From road construction to university printing, Joe Goss' customer service skills have served him well. by Bob Neubauer "No previous printing experience needed." Those were the words on the job notice that caught Joe Goss' eye back in 1985. After 12 years in the road construction business, he was starting to wonder about his future. The slumping economy was taking its toll on business. Figuring he had nothing to lose, Goss applied for the job as director of Indiana University Printing Services, in Bloomington. Much to his surprise, he was called for an interview. That interview revealed that the in-plant, though very proficient

It's safe to start calling Terry Fulcomer a financial guru. With six employees and a base budget of $750,000, the Prince William County graphic arts and print shop supervisor just scored a Heidelberg NexPress 2100, along with a Heidelberg Digimaster 9110. The key to his wisdom? Insourcing. Roping in 15 to 20 percent of the in-plant's income, insourcing work from other counties and municipalities is essential to this very successful shop. But it wasn't always such a booming in-plant. Fulcomer says when he first started at the shop, most of the equipment was archaic and the quality of work was very poor. "I've

When you work for Sunkist, it's pretty important to be able to print the color orange. That was one of the first things Tim Criswell realized five years ago after he was hired to run the in-plant at Sunkist Growers, in Sherman Oaks, Calif. At the time, the small shop was printing only forms and stationery. Everything that featured Sunkist's five-color logo had to be printed outside. This irked Criswell. He wanted to print that logo. "That, to me, was easy growth," he says. So he traded an unneeded collator for a used one-color Heidelberg KORD and went to work. Customers had

It's not often a school district print shop lands the printing for an entire city. But Carson Bartels, coordinator of central print services for Waterloo Community School District, saw an opportunity to grab an extra 17 percent of additional revenue for his in-plant, and he took it. Nine years ago, Waterloo, Iowa's city print shop had just said good-bye to its veteran manager as she left for retirement. The city was considering outsourcing the abandoned in-plant's work, but Bartels stepped up, insisting that his four-employee shop could pick up where the old manager left off. Bartels proved his in-plant could save the city money,

Trinity Church has played a part in much of New York's history. On September 11, 2001, it participated again. The in-plant, as usual, was there to help.